The Outback Within

Download or read book The Outback Within written by Mark Byrne and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2016-09-23 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is it about the Australian outback? For nearly two centuries, narratives of outback journeys have been suffused with the aura of death. Why? It is not just that the desert is big, dry, hot and apparently empty. The outback is Australia’s “mythological crucible,” and journeys there have become rites of passage. It is where settler Australians go to die and perhaps be reborn. This book explores the landscape of this evolving national mythology. It argues that a more conscious engagement with the process of symbolic death and rebirth is needed for Australians to enter into a deeper understanding of themselves and their relationship to the land and its Indigenous people.